Advances in analytical science have made it possible to extract a wide variety of information from a biological specimen. For example, it may be possible to assess the health, identify possible future health issues, and provide information related to the genetic makeup of an individual from which the specimen was obtained.
Many of these biological specimens may be processed in laboratories. The laboratory may receive such specimens from institutions, including, for example, hospitals, clinics, and/or the police, and also, to a lesser extent, from individuals themselves. These specimens may include, for example, tissue removed during a surgical procedure, tissue from crime scenes, and test materials from a home testing kit (e.g., an HIV test), among other things.
In a laboratory, many resources, including labor and consumable items, may be utilized to process, prepare, and test a specimen. Each specimen may also pass through many lab stations and may be handled by many operators, each working at his/her own pace, resulting in difficulty determining costs and error rates associated with each station of the lab. For example, a laboratory may use an accessionist at an accessioning station to receive and prep the specimen (e.g., by labeling the specimen, listing the requested tests, etc.) before further analysis. After accessioning, a technician may carry a specimen to a grossing station to measure, cut, and record a description of the specimen. The specimen may then be manually altered by a histotech (e.g., by embedding, sectioning, staining, imaging, etc.) at subsequent stations where process and utilization data may be tracked. Then, a pathologist may review primary specimen output pieces (e.g., slides) for a diagnosis. Because pathology lab workflows vary greatly from lab to lab, obtaining an accurate accounting of the costs associated with a lab may be difficult, if not impossible, without analyzing each employee at each station over a period of time.
Some laboratories have utilized processes for tracking performance and economics by exclusively measuring use of consumables (e.g., knives, specimen stains, reagents, etc.). However, such processes fail to accurately assess variables such as employee labor cost, machine use, service, depreciation, and error rates.